Miniaturization of electroanalytical systems

The advances in the field of miniaturized amperometric and voltammetric systems which have significantly increased in importance in recent years are described. From the point of view of miniaturization, the dimensions of voltammetric electrodes can be reduced from the mm to the μm scale without deteriorating the signal-to-noise characteristics. It is now well accepted that electrochemical detection (ED) is very suitable to be combined with capillary electrophoresis (CE) owing to the attractive features offered by properly designed detector cells. It was demonstrated that local temperature control at micro-electrode surfaces can be an effective means to enhance the analytical performance of voltammetric measurements.